SoundRain, VibeDeck Make Direct To Fan Download Sales Easy & Cheap
There are a myriad of sites, apps and services helping musicians to sell digital downloads direct to their fans. But two new ones offer interesting twists that make it simple to sell music direct to fans; and for now at least, both are 100% free to use after PayPal's usual transaction fees.
SoundRain is a mashup of the Minno micro-payments system and SoundCloud. It was created just 8 days ago at San Francisco's Music Hack Day by Minno founders Noah Ready-Campbell and Calvin Young and launched this morning.
SoundCloud users connect their account with SoundRain and select tracks to sell for 99 cents. A “Buy with Minno”’ link appears on the Soundcloud player that takes the fan directly to SoundRain. When sales reach $10, SoundRain delivers earnings via PayPal. Payouts can also be set higher to minimize PayPal fees; but beyond that, there are no fees or charges. "The cost will be on the partner (SoundCloud), but there's no cost to partners while Minno is still in beta," a SoundCloud spokesperson told Hypebot.
VibeDeck (disclosure: a Hypebot advertiser) creates simple download sales landing pages with a plyer and other info. Artists then connect their VibeDeck account to PayPal and receive payments directly each time there's a sale. Beyond PayPal fees, no other charges are passed on to musicians.
VibeDeck's goal is to keep the service free; so they are working on other ways to monetize the service, founder Lior Shamir told Hypebot.
Wow. What is the PayPal fee for VibeDeck?
Their site is indeed awesome at fist glance, but I found all the download options are either broken or so slow as to render them useless. This site needs to bake for a few more months before it will be usable.